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The homeless shelter that Occupy Atlanta protesters have been camping out in has been confirmed for housing two cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis. (credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) – The home base for Occupy Atlanta has tested positive for tuberculosis.

The Fulton County Health Department confirmed Wednesday that residents at the homeless shelter where protesters have been occupying have contracted the drug-resistant disease. WGCL reports that a health department spokeswoman said there is a possibility that both Occupy Atlanta protesters and the homeless people in the shelter may still be at risk since tuberculosis is contracted through air contact.

“Over the last three months were have been two persons who have resided in this facility who have been diagnosed with confirmed or suspected infectious tuberculosis (TB),” said Fulton County Services Director Matthew McKenna in a written statement to CBS Atlanta. “One of these persons was confirmed to have a strain of TB that is resistant to a single, standard medication used to treat this condition. All person(s) identified as positive have begun treatment and are being monitored to ensure that medication is taken as directed.”

The agency reported in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that nearly 40% of the cases, 4,378, were in people born in the United States. The remaining 6,707 cases were in people who were born abroad. More than half of those cases were among people born in four countries: Mexico (23%), the Philippines (11%), India (8.6%) and Vietnam (7.7%). Overall, foreign-born people were 11 times as likely to have TB as those born in this country.

Translation- Illegal aliens account for 60% of tuberculosis cases and there is no reason to believe that they are not responsible for the other 40%.

As the weather turns, the protesters in Zuccotti Park, the nexus of the Occupy Wall Street protests in Lower Manhattan, have been forced to confront a simple truth: packing themselves like sardines inside a public plaza, where cigarettes are shared and a good night’s sleep remains elusive, may not be conducive to good health.

“Pretty much everything here is a good way to get sick,” said Salvatore Cipolla, 23, from Long Island. “It’ll definitely thin the herd.”

The city’s health department said that officials had visited the park and that it would continue to monitor conditions with winter looming. “It should go without saying that lots of people sleeping outside in a park as we head toward winter is not an ideal situation for anyone’s health,” the department said in a statement.

Dr. Philip M. Tierno Jr., the director of clinical microbiology and immunology at NYU Langone Medical Center, said the conditions could leave park-dwellers susceptible to respiratory viruses; norovirus, the so-called winter vomiting virus, which can lead to vomiting and diarrhea and which could quickly overwhelm the limited bathroom facilities in the area; and tuberculosis, which is more common in indigent populations and can be spread by coughing.

Even some camping in the park have grown concerned in recent weeks with the living quarters. Damp laundry and cardboard signs, left in the rain, have provided fertile ground for mold. Some protesters urinate in bottles, or occasionally a water-cooler jug, to avoid the lines at public restrooms. Food, from orange peels to scrambled eggs, is often discarded outside tents.

“I’m amazed that in a park full of revolutionaries, there are large contingents that can’t throw away their own trash,” said Jordan McCarthy, 22, a member of the protesters’ sanitation team.

Demonstrators do maintain a medical tent, filled mostly with over-the-counter medications and alternative treatments, like herbal remedies. Some have spotted shamans walking the premises, Mr. Carey said, though licensed doctors and nurses often take volunteer shifts in the tent as well. Some strap flashlights to their heads, like workers in a mine shaft, because the site becomes so dark at night. (The tent has no electricity.)

Miniature bottles of hand sanitizer have appeared sporadically inside the park, though it is unclear who placed them there. Volunteers at the medical tent also have on-call contacts in acupuncture, chiropractics, massage therapy and psychotherapy, protesters said. ...